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LINA - Life Cycle Assessment tool

In June 2016, BRE Group launched a new online Life Cycle Assessment tool LINA, enabling companies and trade associations to assess their products in line with EN 15804, the European standard for the sustainability of construction products.

The standard considers the environmental impact of a product through its whole life from raw materials and manufacturing to application, use and disposal.

There is a growing need for product manufacturers to be more transparent about the environmental impacts of their products. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been part of the construction products industry for decades, with outputs delivered through Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). However, there have been questions relating to the ease of access to data and the resources required to conduct such studies.

Data from the LINA assessment can be submitted online for a BRE Global EPD stamp of approval which demonstrates that the underlying data and data handling on the product’s sustainability are consistently reliable.

Speaking at the launch event BRE’s Associate Director of Sustainable Products Dr Shamir Ghumra said: "EPD are now increasingly demanded by clients and specifiers on global development projects that use sustainability standards like BREEAM, CEEQUAL and the Home Quality Mark. EPD will also become a prerequisite of BIM (Building Information Modelling) as it gains market traction. We need to encourage more product manufacturers to get EPD and LINA is the catalyst not simply because it is compliant with the required standard but it also enables companies to generate the data required themselves thereby reducing costs."

LINA can also be used for product evaluations, product development, and internal benchmarking purposes. Its benefits are not limited to EPD; the update to ISO 14001 last year now places greater emphasis on life cycle perspective and the outputs of LINA can complement an existing Environmental Management System.

The LINA tool has been developed with IT software specialists PRe Sustainability.